Letter: What’s with the sudden ‘English only’ obsession?

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Encouraged by the presidency of an open bigot, we seem to have a new wave of ignorant anger over the presence of people in America who speak languages other than English. For just a little bit of educational value, it is worth knowing that the United States has never, at any time in its history, been a monolingual (one language) country.

There are many people in south Texas and New Mexico whose ancestors were there long before we were a country and remain fluently bilingual in English and Spanish. Significant populations in Maine and Louisiana consider French their first language. Whenever large waves of immigrants have come to the U.S. from the same country — Poland, Norway, Sweden, Italy — they have tended to settle in enclaves of others from the same country and the generation who immigrated as adults largely did not become fluent English speakers but their children did and assimilated very nicely — while often maintaining a strong sense of cultural connection to “the old country.” Today’s immigrants are no different.

And, of course, large areas of our country were German speaking from before the revolution all the way up to 1917 when we entered a war against Germany.

In most of the world, speaking more than one language is a normal thing and an accomplishment to be proud of. Only in America to people take pride in being monolingual.

The current obsession with “English only” needs to be called out for what it is: blatant bigotry